The Rhône Valley of France is famous for its Syrah, Grenache, and Viognier grapes (among others), while Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Cab Franc (et al!) are grown in Bordeaux. And these wine grapes have thrived in their respective regions for centuries.
But what happens when rising temperatures change the kinds of grapes that can be grown in a particular area?
How is the climate crisis changing the way wine is produced? And what can we do as consumers to promote sustainability among winemakers?
Paul Wagner is a Viticulture and Winery Technology Instructor at Napa Valley College and Cohost of Bottle Talk with Rick and Paul. He also serves as guest lecturer at multiple universities in Europe and the US and offers several wine-related courses as part of The Great Courses lecture series.
On this episode of Reversing Climate Change, Paul joins Ross to explain what attracts him to the artistry and experience of winemaking, exploring what makes wine grapes sweeter than any other fruit and how they give you a sense of both place and time.
Paul describes how climate is changing the way wine is made everywhere in the world, discussing what winemakers are doing to avoid rising temperatures and how the climate crisis might influence the evolution of wine in places like Bordeaux and Rhone.
Listen in for insight on how climate informs the alcohol content in wine and get Paul’s advice for the environmentally conscious on choosing a wine you like—and then finding a winemaker who’s working toward carbon neutrality.
(Wine is discussed for its own sake for the first twenty or so minutes. If you want to skip right to the intersection with climate, it begins at 24:32.)
More from the show
Ad-free episodes and other benefits come with a paid subscription.
Carbon Removal Newsroom, the news show that ran alongside this one, is over. Its episodes are still up, on the feed Climate Workers Anonymous now uses.
Carbon Removal Memes is still going.
Resources
Napa Valley College Viticulture & Winery Technology Department
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat
Familia Torres: Wine & Climate Change
Wine Folly: The Essential Guide to Wine by Madeline Puckette and Justin Hammack
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change Podcast with Nori. I’m Ross Kenyon. I’m the creative editor at Nori. Today I have with me Paul Wagner, instructor for Napa Valley College’s Viticulture and Winery Technology Department, where he has taught for more than 25 years and a lecturer at multiple great courses lecture series. Thanks for making great audio content. My pleasure. And I’m delighted you’re enjoying it, Ross. I’ve learned a lot about wine recently and I’ve gotten more and more into it. It seems like a natural progression as someone who cares about gardening, about agriculture.
Wine seemingly touches all of the same things that a gardener cares about and then some. What is it that attracts you to wine? And am I onto something with my characterization there?
Paul Wagner: You are, although I warn you that in the world of the internet, wine is one of those rabbit holes that once you go down it, you may never reappear again. You’re right. It involves all the wonderful challenges and realities of gardening, but then ultimately what it creates is something that I think goes beyond the raw material of the garden. And ultimately, there are people who would argue that what we’re making when we make wine is art. And if that’s the case, it is absolutely the most intimate form of art because we look at art on the walls.
We listen to music, but we put wine actually inside our bodies and we experience it not only as an artistic experience, but as a physical experience. So it’s a pretty fascinating topic. And as I say, you can spend your life studying it. I certainly have.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, you’ve had an illustrious career in wine. It’s very fascinating to look over it. With regard to the artistry of winemaking, long-running debate about how much of it is the actual growing grapes well versus the winemaking process after the grape’s been grown. This might be a false distinction. I have a suspicion that’s what you might tell me, but where exactly does the artistry lay?
Paul Wagner: Well, there are two questions, and one of them is what makes great wine, and the second one is, is great wine art? What makes great wine is great grapes. You know, I always think that wine is a little bit like making a salad. If you start with great ingredients, your primary job is not to screw them up. But if you start with wilted lettuce, everything else goes downhill from there. So a huge amount of making great wine is understanding what’s going on in the vineyard and picking the fruit at the absolute perfect point of ripeness.
I have a dear friend who’s made many, many great bottles of wine, and he always says that he gets paid a whole lot of money to make one decision. Which is when to pick the grapes. Because he says, if I get that decision right, everything else is easy. And if I get it wrong, I spend the rest of my life trying to fix the mistake that I made. So that’s how grapes influence wine. But then the next question is, is making wine an art or whether it’s craft?
And Robert Mondavi had that great line, making wine is a craft, making great wine is an art. But I tend to lean towards craft rather than very much if we take ceramics, you know, making a pot, making a plate. Is that art or is it craft? And it’s really a question of the artist’s motivation more than it’s the question of the end product. So I’m going to leave that to somebody else to make the final decision as to whether it’s art or craft.
Ross Kenyon: You address this in, I think this is in one of your lectures from Be Your Own Sommelier, one of your great courses series about how a lot of the wines that are truly great are very polarizing or these winemakers will take risks. Where someone who’s trying for consistency, something like a mastige, mass prestige winemaker is really just getting the same thing in the bottle and they’re not trying to take a risk. They’re trying for consistency. Maybe that is a illustration of this principle or maybe not. It could be.
Paul Wagner: In fact, one year in my class at Napa Valley College, I had one of the instructors from the art department taking my class online. And when I asked her about a definition of art, she always said that art must be an exploration. If you’re not learning something while you’re doing it, it can’t be art. Then it’s craft. And so maybe that in combination with the point you made is a good distinction. But that also implies that if you’re making great art, you’re going to fail sometimes.
And I think most great winemakers would like to explain that they never fail. So it’s a little of both in that.
Ross Kenyon: How much room is there for making radically different decisions? And I say this in the context of someone who’s had a number of quite manipulated wines. Why is the Chardonnay so buttery? Why is this rosé so perfectly pink? And I don’t think it’s just a factor of great grapes. There’s additives and other things that are put in the mix at some point, right? Like if your job is just to grow great grapes, how much room is there to take risks?
Paul Wagner: Well, first of all, let’s start with the basis of making great wine, which is great grapes. And it’s agriculture. So the biggest risk in the world is agriculture. The real question is, do you pick before the rain when the grapes aren’t quite ripe? Or do you wait until after the rain and hope that the rain doesn’t do much damage? And in the meantime, you are sweating blood about that decision. So in terms of making great wine, those are the kinds of risks. And they’re terrifying for a winemaker.
Every grape grower always says, let’s pick the grapes now. They’re fine. And every winemaker says, no, we need it. We need to leave them another four days. And the grower says, but wait, it’s going to rain or something could go wrong. And the winemaker says, but I’m trying to make something great. So that’s a really clear risk. More commercially predictable wines. I think, frankly, I think there’s a lot less chemical manipulation than you might think, but there’s a lot more blending. So you might take grapes that are a little less than perfectly ripe And some grapes that are a little more than perfectly ripe and put those together so that you get the same acid ripeness balance.
It’s not quite as pure an expression as a wine that’s picked at the perfect point. But I think, for example, with the bigger companies, There aren’t a lot of chemicals that can really fix a wine that is broken. All you can do is filter it to strip all the flavor out of it. And once you’ve done that, it’s something that you probably aim towards distilling into something that you can drink mixed with orange juice and grenadine or something.
Ross Kenyon: You pick grapes at the peak of their ripeness because sugar translates into... That means more sugar, right? More sun means more sugar. More sugar means more alcohol. And does that correlate into good wine in general or is there other things happening?
Paul Wagner: Well, the wonderful thing about wine is that’s half of the equation. Half of the equation is getting the sugar up to where the wine is ripe enough and you get the alcohol levels you want and it tastes ripe. And traditionally in Europe, which is a primarily colder climate viticulture, that’s the challenge. But in America, there’s a separate challenge, which is in many cases in America, the grapes get ripe every year. And the real question is how ripe do you get them? Because as grapes, as the sugar goes up in grapes, the acidity goes down.
And you have all bitten into an apple where the first sensation was sweet and the second sensation was kind of gummy and kind of flabby and this isn’t a great apple. It’s sweet, but it doesn’t have That crisp snap that you’d look for in a great apple. And the same thing happens with grapes. So you can get grapes that are too ripe and the fruit actually tastes kind of tired and the wine tastes kind of flabby and it can be quite high in alcohol, but not good.
So that’s the challenge is to identify that perfect point when the flavors are ripe, but the acidity is still there to give fresh taste. And of course, to a certain extent, this is a personal decision. My wife is a professional chef and she prefers salad dressings with slightly less vinegar than I do. So it’s a matter of personal taste. Of course, I’m right and she’s wrong. But within that, that’s the same thing that a winemaker has to decide is how fresh do they want the wine versus how big and rich and round do they want the wines.
And when you taste a great one, you realize it can almost be all of those things. But that’s the nut to crack. That’s the real challenge in making great wine.
Ross Kenyon: I swear we’re going to get to climate change in wine, but since I have you here, I want to ask all the wine questions that I’ve always wanted to ask. Sure. But how should I feel about blending? Because what you described makes it sound bad. I think most people probably have an inherent bias towards single vintage, single varietal wines, except for things like things that are grown in the Rhone, Bordeaux, places famous for blends. Should I really hold this prejudice or should I relax that a little bit?
Paul Wagner: You should relax that. And you should relax that for exactly the reason you just cited. Remember that a lot of the imagery or the prejudices we have in the American wine industry come from a generation or two ago when the most popular wines were things like Hardy Burgundy and Mountain Chablis. Those are just blended wines. They weren’t bad wines. They really had no real interesting character. And they were relatively cheap. And so as a way of distinguishing quality wine from those blends, then producers in California started saying, well, my wine is 100% Cabernet Sauvignon.
And that was their way of saying, I’m not making that cheap blended stuff that you buy in the supermarket. But the truth is that some of the greatest wines in the world are blends. And you’ve mentioned a couple with Bordeaux, Chateau Lafitte Rothschild, it’s a blended wine. And Chateauneuf-du-Pape in the Rhone, that’s a blended wine. And when we think of the great Champagnes like Dom Perignon, pure blend, as well as great vintage ports. Blending itself has nothing to do with whether or not the wine is good or even great.
It’s really the vision of the winemaker that’s the distinction. And what is the winemaker trying to do? Are they trying to make a wine that tastes every It tastes good every day when you’re having a hamburger or a pizza. I think that’s a really legitimate goal for a winemaker. But nobody’s going to confuse that with Chateau de Fiet-Roschild. And how they get there is really up to the winemaker and the resources they have. Small producers may only have three acres of grapes. And what they’re making is whatever comes off that vineyard.
In a bad year, the grapes aren’t so good. Tough decisions to be made there. A big winery often has hundreds, if not thousands of acres of grapes, and they can always find someplace that’s a little better. So they can always make at least one wine that’ll stand out from the crowd.
Ross Kenyon: I think one more wrinkle to my prejudice against blended wines here is that there’s so many variables with making a single vintage, single varietal wine that surely blending between different years and different grapes. How do you even keep all the variables from confounding one another? How do you know what’s actually happening in the wine? It sounds even more difficult than a single cultivar, single vintage.
Paul Wagner: You’re right. And in fact, I always say that the most gifted winemakers I’ve ever known are the ones who make sparkling wine because they are often blending up to 150, 200 different lots of wine. They’re blending a base wine. And then after that, they’re adding an additional dosage of yeast and sugar to get the bubbles in it. And so they’re making this base wine and it’s going to be two, three, four years now. Before they find out whether they made the right decision. And yet they’re having to do that three or four years ahead of time, blending this incredibly complex blend of vineyards and varietals and all the rest.
To me, whether the wine sells for $20 a bottle or $300 a bottle, that process has to be some kind of art.
Ross Kenyon: I love it when I’m unintentionally onto something. That was really rewarding to hear. Are you a fan of aromatized wines as well?
Paul Wagner: Well, the real question is, is what do I drink versus what do I think is fascinating? And so I tend to drink pretty traditional wines, but I’m also, you know, my background actually was running a company that helped wineries sell their wines. And one of the things I always told them was, you know, you have to find a way to be different. There are 150,000 wines in the U.S. market. And for you to say my wine is unique because it’s a small family winery with a very select vineyard and we really make careful wine and we’ve won a couple of awards.
That’s true of 10,000 wineries in America. What makes you different? And so I’m always fascinated by wineries that look for different ways to stand out. And we think of this as a modern innovation, but the ancient Romans added pepper. They added salt water. They added herbs to their wines. So did the ancient Greeks. So when we talk about getting back to traditional wine, just depends on how far back you want to go. They put honey in their wine. So I think all these experiments are fun.
The real question is, what do you want to drink? When do you want to drink it? What do you want to drink it with? And to my mind, the most important question in terms of wine is who else is going to be sitting around the table? And that’s what really decides what kind of wine you should buy.
Ross Kenyon: Good advice for sure. It’s been nice to see. I feel like I’ve been noticing a lot more vermouth cinnamaris. How do you pluralize an Italian word that’s already plural? It’s nice to see that having a renaissance though. And I find a lot of those flavors to be really fascinating. But I think most people still associate vermouth with that dusty bottle of Martini and Rossi in their dad’s liquor cabinet that was open 20 years ago and didn’t realize that it should have been thrown out a month after that.
Yeah.
Paul Wagner: Well, you’re absolutely right. I love those things. I think they’re fascinating. And again, some of them go back to recipes that are quite literally medieval, and they were originally developed as medicinal products. Remember that in the Middle Ages, oftentimes the local water could kill you. So people drank wine and when they wanted to give you a medicine, their solution was, for God’s sake, don’t take it with a glass of water, take it with a glass of wine. And in those cases, dissolve the herbs in the wine to create the medicine.
So a lot of those things began as medicines, but I just think they’re delicious. They’re fun. They’re not something that I sit down and drink two bottles of over the course of a week. At the end of a meal, I’m a big fan of those Amadi or some of the vermouths and even things like, you know, the ones that are named for religious orders like Chartreuse. Chartreuse actually began as a medicinal product in the Middle Ages and it’s still produced today. And that’s the ultimate marketing success when your brand becomes a word in a foreign language because everybody knows what chartreuse is.
It’s the color of that liqueur those monks made in the Middle Ages in France. And that’s pretty cool.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, chartreuse is such a fascinating one, both for the color and as a cultural reference point. I also like that. I think something like three monks know about it. I know there’s like dension root and a whole bunch of other weird Alpine herbs. Yeah, they can’t tell you the recipe. And you’re right that only a few of them know the recipe to make sure it doesn’t get out. I love the idea of wanting to be a very serious Christian and becoming a monk and then being involved in the manufacture of hard liquor.
I think that’s what goes on in a monk’s career that happens.
Paul Wagner: Well, remember that during the Middle Ages, the monks were the best winemakers in Europe. And part of that was because they were literate. Part of it was because they had vineyards donated to them as part of the selling of indulgences. But part of it was also because every year they had to make wine because they needed wine to celebrate mass. So they were the absolute experts in the world of wine back then. And you still see their influence today in every country in the world.
Ross Kenyon: You hinted at this a little bit with it being involved in the Eucharist and in communion. Wine has such a stronghold culturally, at least in Europe and America and places where Europeans got to. Why not apple cider? Why didn’t apple cider take over the planet? Why is wine the thing?
Paul Wagner: What a great question. And cider is a more complicated answer. The comparison I always make is with beer. Because beer is made from dried ingredients and you can make beer anytime you want. As long as you have some grain and some hops, you’re good to go. You can make your beer. Wine can only be made at one particular time in the year. It’s at the time of harvest. When the fruit is ripe, the animals are fat, the grain has been harvested. In the ancient world, this would have been when people were fat and happy and looking forward to a long, dark winter.
But there was that one time of the year You could actually make wine. And I’m convinced that kind of memory is ultimately what makes wine a much more celebratory beverage, for example, than beer. It’s a more ritualized beverage than beer. Challenge with cider is that cider doesn’t reach the same alcohol level, so it doesn’t last as long. So you can make wine and have it be good two or three years later. Very difficult to do that with cider. Is that just because of how sugar-dense wine grapes are?
Yeah. Wine grapes are simply sweeter than any fruit you’ve ever bought in the market. Even those grapes you buy in the market that you think are delicious and sweet have only about 60% or 70% of the sugar that a wine grape, when it’s fully ready to be picked, has. And that makes a huge difference in flavor, in richness, and of course, obviously, an alcoholic impact. It’s the one beverage, you know, that I always say not only gives you a sense of place, but also a sense of time because you can open a bottle of wine from the year that you and your wife are married or the year that your daughter was born.
And that’s something that you can really only do with wine. And that’s one of the reasons it’s such an amazing beverage.
Ross Kenyon: Hmm. And so the increased sugar of wine grapes leads to more alcohol and then the alcohol protects the beverage over time, right?
Paul Wagner: Yes. The two great preservatives, three if we’re counting red wines, but the two great preservatives in wine are the alcohol and the acid. And one of those acids in red wine is a little more distinctive because it’s tannic acid. But if you imagine if you want to preserve something, you put it in an alcohol. Yes. But if you want to preserve fruit and keep it fresh, if you slice an apple open, So if you make a wine that has from those perfect grapes that has the high alcohol of a ripe grape and yet still has some acid in it, Then what happens is the acidity in that wine keeps the fruit fresh.
And it means that when you open the bottle one year, two years, five years, 10 years down the road, it tastes still lively and fresh and exciting. And if there’s one difference between a lot of those commercial wines that you buy in the supermarkets for, let’s say, under $10 and the wines you would buy at a fine wine shop for $100, one of the primary differences is those Those wines for under $10 are really designed to be drunk within a year of being released. They’re not really designed to be held onto for a long time.
The more expensive wines generally are wines that, at least in some cases, are designed to be aged and opened up 2, 3, 5, 10, 20 years later.
Ross Kenyon: You’ve been majorly influential on my thinking on acid in the same way that Samin Nosrat’s book, Salt, Fat, Acid. He really helped me understand why vinegar and acid are so important to cooking, but you inspired me to pick up a bottle of The Hungarian, is it Tokai? Is that how I say it? Yes, Tokai. Which is famously sweet and delicious, but also it didn’t taste that sweet to me. And I believe I was like, surely there must be a lot of acid in here to compensate for the sweetness because it’s not cloying.
Is that what is happening in wine? I’m so happy. Yep. You got in my brain, Paul. Thanks for teaching me that. I don’t think people think about acid because people always say they don’t want a sweet wine, right? Right.
Paul Wagner: And in fact, they say they don’t want a sweet wine, but in fact, many people do want a wine that’s slightly sweet. The Germans have a wonderful solution for this because in most countries in the world, the definition of a dry wine is a wine that has no sugar. In Germany, they actually say, well, you have to measure the acidity too, because when the acidity of a wine is higher than the acidity of lemon juice, you can have a little sugar and it still ends up tasting pretty dry.
So in German wine technology, when they talk about wines, they actually say that the level of sweetness is a combination of the remaining sugar in the wine and the level of acid. And that’s one of the things I think Tokai does so amazingly is that they have very high acid and yet high sugar and the wines are exhilarating.
Ross Kenyon: Yes. And thanks for breaking me out of that prison because I feel like the, I don’t like sweet wines is a status thing. That doesn’t have to be. It’s okay to like some sweetness. I don’t know why it has to be like, I only like the dry. Maybe they’re just used to cloyingly bad sweet wines without acid to compensate. Is it maybe something like that led to us having this cultural reference point?
Paul Wagner: It is and it goes right back to those same wines that people were drinking when they wanted to drink single varietal wines instead of blended wines. Back in the day, back when I was quite young, cheap wine was always blended and kind of sweet. And the classic is, you know, sweet $4, $3, $2 bottle rosé. And in order to distinguish yourself as a serious wine lover, as opposed to someone who just slugs down glasses of sweet rosé, people would say, I don’t like sweet wines. I will tell you that when I do wine and food pairing dinners, there are always four or five glasses of wine on the table, a couple of whites, a couple of reds, and then a dessert wine at the end.
I will tell you that probably a third of the people at the dinner, as the waiter is going around pouring the wine, will say, not too much of the sweet wine. I don’t really like sweet wines. If you go around at the end of the dinner, there’s only one of those glasses that is absolutely bone dry at every single place. And it’s the dessert wine because a great dessert wine is absolute heaven. And people may not like sweet wine, but when they get a great dessert wine, they love it.
Ross Kenyon: So if you’re listening, it’s OK to like sherry now. It’s OK to like port. We’re going to you’re going to bring it back. Absolutely. All right. I’m going to put a little bookend here for the listener. So maybe at the beginning of the show, I’m saying if you want to talk about wine for wine’s sake, the first 25 minutes are that. But now at minute 28 or wherever we are at now, let’s talk about climate change and wine. One of the things that caught my eye, Paul, that I did not know existed in any meaningful sense is I saw wine is being grown in the UK.
I think that was truly shocking to me.
Paul Wagner: Not only being grown, but actually really good wine. They are making sparkling wine in the southwest of England, and it’s absolutely delicious, absolutely competitive with French champagne. And it’s interesting that Back in the 11, 12, 1300s, they were also making wine in the UK, although it wasn’t the UK then, partly because, of course, the ruling family was William the Conqueror, and he was from Normandy. He was French to begin with, spoke French. So I’m sure he had something to say about what they were planting. But yes, you are seeing a change in the way wine is made everywhere in the world.
We think of Germany as a place that makes great white Rieslings, cold climate grapes that do well in snowy climates. But a few years ago, the number one wine at the London International Wine Fair was, I’m sorry, Decanter Awards, was a German Pinot Noir, which is a red wine grown in Burgundy, not normally thought of as a key part of the German wine business. But right now, Germany is, I think, the third or fourth largest producer of Pinot Noir in the world. 30 years ago, that was impossible.
Ross Kenyon: Wow. Well, Pinot is famously temperamental, though, and requires very specific conditions relative to something like cab, which is like sun, right?
Paul Wagner: Yes. The problem with Pinot Noir is I always describe Pinot Noir as a surly teenager of a grape. It’s never quite as happy as you’d like it to be. And it’s hard to find places that you can get that balance. It has a tendency to And then if you’re growing it in a cooler area, it tends to get not ripe enough and it produces kind of thin, mean wines. But these days, they’re making really great Pinot Noir in Germany, in Oregon, in New Zealand, as well as, of course, its birthplace, which is Burgundy.
Bulgaria is growing Pinot Noir, and clearly people are experimenting. It’s an expensive grape. It makes expensive wine, so there’s a real incentive to try to grow it. But people are discovering that as climate changes, there are new interesting places to grow it. And right now, boy, I just taught a class on the wines of New Zealand the other night, and we had some Pinot Noirs from New Zealand that were just absolutely delicious. Wow.
Ross Kenyon: What happens to places like once I was in Ontario and I went to the ice wine vineyards, which are another beautiful dessert wine, very sweet and lovely. How long are they going to be able to hang in there? Those conditions surely must be changing and maybe there’s no longer appropriate for ice wine at this point.
Paul Wagner: Well, that’s exactly right. In fact, I know that a couple of the last years they’ve had a real difficulty making ice wine because it didn’t get cold enough to freeze until too late. I know one winery in Washington a few years ago made two ice wines the same year because the grapes didn’t actually freeze from the previous year until January, which is of course the next vintage. So they made one in January and one in December and then ran into trouble with the labeling laws because they wanted to label one We’ll see you next time.
And the real impact of climate change is happening on a much bigger scale, just in terms of what people are making around the world, what they’re growing, how they are changing, even the kind of grapes they plant in their vineyards to try to react to the fact that it is clearly getting warmer.
Ross Kenyon: Incredible. Where do people even go? I think in some places, there is no more land left to migrate to. If you’re trying to go up in latitudes, how much farther south in Australia can you go without going into the ocean or getting into the littoral zone where it’s probably inappropriate for wine? I can see, for instance, North America, right? If you’re looking to invest in wine country, you should probably be looking in North of BC at this point, I don’t even know where you could go.
But other places have none of that.
Paul Wagner: There is actually really good wine made in the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. Australia is making very good wine in Tasmania, which is as far south as you can get in Australia. Remember that there are a couple of other factors that influence local temperatures. And for example, one of the climate change issues in the Napa Valley is that the Napa Valley may not get warmer in the next 50 years. The Napa Valley is up against the basically it is heavily influenced by the Pacific Ocean and the current in the Pacific Ocean off of Napa Valley comes from Alaska.
It’s cold water. So as the interior of the United States heats up and we’re talking not only about the Central Valley of California, but even Nevada, that hot air rises and pulls the cold air off the ocean. And it may mean that some of the coastal areas in California get colder and windier as a result of climate change rather than warmer. And it really depends almost on mile by mile, depending on where you are in relationship to the local mountains, the flow of air, et cetera. So one area is staying close to the coast and the other area is moving up into higher elevations.
So Miguel Torres, one of the most famous winemakers in Spain and someone who is extremely concerned about this issue, he makes wine outside of Barcelona. And he has, over the past few years, not only changed the kinds of grapes he’s growing in his existing vineyards, but he’s also buying more vineyard land up in the Pyrenees, where he expects he’ll be able to make the kinds of wines he’s made in the past down the At lower elevations, he’s now planting vineyards up at 2,000, 3,000 feet in the Pyrenees to try to achieve that same condition.
And of course, that only works if the climate only changes a few degrees. So that’s the other unknown answer in all of this is how much climate change is going to happen before we fix it.
Ross Kenyon: Well, thanks for bringing me back from the edge here. I was so focused on latitude. I forgot about elevation or actual local neurological effects. So that’s good. So wine isn’t going to go extinct.
Paul Wagner: No. Although we may see different styles emerge, certainly we will see different styles emerge, whether it’s because the market’s interested or whether it’s because that’s what people can make. We’ve certainly seen a change in style. I would point to the wine The wines of Bordeaux 30 years ago are quite different than the wines of Bordeaux today. Some of that is because they’re trying to get the grapes riper in response to the very positive critical reviews of some of the California Cabernets, but also because weather is simply getting warmer.
So some of the more, let’s say, traditional wine critics have said that some of the wines from Bordeaux no longer taste like Bordeaux. They taste like something else because they’re made from grapes that just got riper than is traditional in Bordeaux. And you’re seeing that in other parts of Europe as well. So things will continue to change. And the good news is everyone is still making pretty good wine, but you may have to look for some new areas or some new varietals in order to find a specific style that you really like.
Ross Kenyon: My understanding of why the Bordeaux blend is what it is, is because it is in a temperamental climate zone. And so planting multiple different varietals is a way of hedging your bets and making sure at least some grapes were able to be made into the wine at the end of the year. If some of them died, you’d still have something. And so maybe we’ll see more of that happening as climate events become more pronounced.
Paul Wagner: Is that possible? And may I congratulate you? That’s a really good summary. Yeah, Bordeaux, you know, remember that many of the investments in Bordeaux 200 or 300 years ago, these were not small farmers. In many cases, these were wealthy people and bankers, and they were making investments. And so they wanted to hedge their bets. As you say, they wanted to make sure that at least every year they had some grapes who got ripe. It’s not that the plant will die, but it is that each plant, each varietal, and there are basically the classic five in Bordeaux, are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec.
And they were planted all with a sense that, well, if the Merlot, if it rains during the bloom of the Merlot, the Cabernet Franc will be blooming a So the rain won’t hit that. And Cabernet Sauvignon has a tough skin. So even if the Cabernet trunk rots because of rain in the fall, the Cabernet. So each one of these grapes not only brings a slightly different flavor characteristic, but a different growing season and a different ripeness level that you can bring the grapes in and make wine out of.
What’s happened in Bordeaux now is that because of climate change, they are currently studying and moving forward with basically regulating and certifying new grape varieties that do better industry. So they can continue to make the style of wine they like, even if they’re not going to be making it with the traditional grape varieties they’ve grown in the past. So they’re planting grapes that do better in, for example, Portugal and Spain, and then talking and in the Rhone, and then talking about, well, if we plant those now, as the weather warms up, we’ll still get the kind of balance and style we want from them to make Bordeaux.
Just because of the appellation requirements or however you frame that, they must use a certain kind of grape. Yeah, most of the famous regions, in fact, I’m going to say all the famous regions in Europe, have very specific regulations that say you can’t just go in there and plant anything you want. You could not go to Bordeaux and plant Chardonnay and say, I’m making Bordeaux Chardonnay. That’s Burgundy’s territory, don’t you? That’s right. That’s impossible. It’s illegal and would not only get the wines thrown out of the European market, but somebody would probably shoot you.
So in order to make these changes, they have these regulations in place to protect the region from just deteriorating into any old wine that’s grown in this region can call itself Bordeaux. So they have these regulations to say, no, you’ve got to make it. It’s got to meet certain quality standards, ripeness levels, et cetera. And they are changing those now to admit the fact that the climate is changing and we need to be able to move in some new directions to make the kinds of wines that capture the style that has always been Bordeaux.
Ross Kenyon: Wow. Which grapes and or styles of winemaking might we see less of and which ones might we see more of in a climate changed future?
Paul Wagner: I don’t think it has to. I’m a marketing guy, Ross. So the wines we’re going to see more of are the wines that people like buying. And the wines we’re going to see less of are the wines that people don’t want to buy. Despite our conversation earlier about how delicious sweet wines are. Right now, they’re a tough sell, and we’re probably going to see less sweet wine in the future, at least the classics of Sherry Port and some of those other wines. They’re struggling in the marketplace.
But that said, I think One of the things we might see are innovative approaches to winemaking in general. We’ve already seen people adding fruit flavors to wine. We’ve seen people adding aging in different kinds of barrels. So I think you’re going to see winemakers more willing to experiment to try to capture this sense of the kind of wine they want to make. And if it becomes popular, then the question is, OK, how can we How can we scale that up and make enough of it to satisfy a real need?
Remember that, what was it, 35 years ago, white Zinfandel didn’t exist. And it’s now one of the top five or six or seven varietals in America today. So change like that can happen. I don’t think it’s going to be quite so much just because of climate change. It’s really because of market factors. But the climate change. In some ways, if we look back at the previous 50 years of making wine, a lot of people would say that’s a little bit like a baseball batter going up and hitting fastballs and occasionally Mother Nature will throw you a curve and you have to go.
You have to learn how to hit the curveball as well as the fastball. With climate change, now there’s a real possibility that in addition to the fastball and the curveball, you’re going to see a knuckleball and a screwball. And Lord knows what happens and how you’re going to try to hit all of those.
Ross Kenyon: That’s pretty fascinating, especially if you’re talking about how some areas might become colder and windier along the coast. I could see, I was just in Walla Walla recently in Washington and they’re famous for, you know, Syrah and there’s a bunch of different sub regions up there that are known for Cabernet Sauvignon and they get enough sun on the hills where it really starts to pop and becomes quite robust. So I guess the simple version of this would be that you would expect to see more like the cabs I just described.
This place is being more sunny, more intensely hot. But you’re saying that consumer palates will still be the thing that’s wagging the tail, will still be driving this, and they’re not going to change their preferences just because climate is changing. Winemakers are going to have to find ways to serve their existing palates.
Paul Wagner: Well, I think so. But your example of Cabernet in Washington is a really good example because remember that the vineyards in Washington state are roughly the same latitude as the vineyards in Bordeaux. And Bordeaux is now authorizing grapes like some of the port wine grapes and Syrah in Bordeaux because they’re worried that the Cabernet may get too ripe. You may see the same thing in Washington. In order to make the kinds of wines they want to make, they’re going to start introducing some new varieties that offer them some additional spices in their spice rack as they put these blends together and they may cut back on the Cabernet.
But of course, if consumers are willing to pay $40 for a bottle of Great Cabernet and only $15 for a bottle of Great Syrah, They’re not going to put Syrah on the label. They’re going to find some way of introducing that grape into the wine without saying, we’re making Syrah now because ultimately the market will decide the profitability of the winery and they’ve got to respect that.
Ross Kenyon: Wow. So, okay. If Syrah is making headway in Bordeaux, Syrah I associate with the Rhone, right? So how is the Rhone changing? Is Syrah expanding its reach there or something else wiggling in? Well, it’s interesting because in general,
Paul Wagner: Syrah is grown in the northern Rhone, which is the cooler part of the Rhone, and the southern Rhone has more Grenache. By the way, both of these grapes are actually originally Spanish grapes that were then brought back. Back to the Rhone, probably during the Middle Ages or afterwards during the famous pilgrimages to Santiago de Compostela, the pilgrims would have walked through these regions in Spain where these grapes originated and then brought them back to France. So, so far in the Rhone, I’m not aware of any regions that are changing their regulations, but that could happen.
It could be that Grenache, which is more typical of the Southern Rhone, starts to creep up into those regions of the Northern Rhone. And we may say more Muvedra or Tempranillo, which is from more classically Spanish. In Spain, Muvedra is called Monastrell. And those might creep up as well. So everybody’s keeping their eyes open. And as is always the case when you’re dealing with large amounts of people, there are some people who are standing on the top of the mountain looking far ahead and saying, oh, my God, we’ve got to do something immediately.
And Miguel Torres would fall into that category. You have the people who say, well, I’m not going to be the first, but if somebody else makes this work, I’m happy to follow. And then there are always, particularly in the wine regions, the people who say, this is the way my great-grandfather did it, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to change it. I don’t care what happens. So all of those factors are in play, and it makes for a fascinating time in the world of wine.
Ross Kenyon: When we were in Walla Walla recently, a lot of the winemakers we spoke to said they can’t keep rosé around at all. All the bottles get bought up basically immediately, which is strange. I mean, rosé is I think often Grenache and Walla Walla does grow a lot of Rhone varietals, but is very strongly associated with Syrah. But they were saying that maybe those things are changing. So maybe that’s an argument in your favor that consumer preferences are probably doing more of the changing than climate.
Paul Wagner: Rosé, you know, it’s funny because 10 years ago I was in Spain telling all the producers who make absolutely fabulous rosé from Grenache that they should be selling this in the U.S. because rosé is going to be a really big thing in the U.S. And they didn’t believe me. And it did become a big thing. And they kind of missed that boat. But rosé is fabulous. 30 years ago, it was rare to find a red wine anywhere in the world, a table wine with an alcohol level of 14%.
I would argue that today, if you walk into a supermarket and look at most of the wines sold in any wine shop or supermarket, most of the red wines and an astonishing number of white wines are over 14%. Now, that just means grapes are getting riper, which is certainly possibly because of climate change, or at least that winemakers are making decision to leave them on the vine a little longer and not getting hammered by rain. So still climate change. But the question is, how high can they go?
And the answer is, well, yeah, but the problem is then the acid starts to drop. And then the wines taste flabby. So the real secret for all of these winemakers is trying to figure out how they can still make a great wine with, you know, every, as the saying is in the wine industry, Mother Nature always laughs last. And right now it’s looking like she’s got a whole series of punchlines set up and all we can do is sort of run from one vintage to the next.
In California this year, we were so happy that we had the highest level of precipitation in December that we’d had in 100 years. And we were thinking the drought is over. We’re saved. This is brilliant. And it basically hasn’t rained since December. We’ve had January, February, and almost all of March. And I think we’ve had a total of a quarter of an inch of rain since December. So Mother Nature, again, always throwing that knuckleball, always throwing the pitch you’re not expecting. And somehow we’re going to figure out what’s going to work next.
Ross Kenyon: Someone listening... Presumably cares a great deal about climate change and being environmentally conscious to some degree. Should they be buying natural wines, something else? Also, you’ve been talking about how hard it is to grow, to be a natural winemaker where you have so many fewer arrows in your quiver. How should we be thinking about natural winemaking?
Paul Wagner: Well, there’s no definition of natural winemaking. So I’m always hesitant to use that term because there is no official definition, which means everybody gets to use it the way they want. There are a couple of definitions. There are biodynamic wines that are certified, and there are a couple of different levels of sustainability. If people are seriously concerned about managing their consumption of wine Based on who is careful with the issues that are confronting global warming, I would look first of all at wineries that are carbon neutral.
There are certainly wineries that are carbon neutral, whether or not they make money. You have to manage the temperature of the grapes. Taking over a basketball arena and then managing the temperatures within that basketball arena to a degree in all of these various tanks. And many of these tanks have to be quite cold to preserve the fruit of the wine. So I would look first at carbon I would also look at wineries who are making a real attempt to limit water because in terms of climate change, one of the real issues, I’m in California, I worry about this, is water use.
And right now, the people who are leading the world in this are Australians, but for most wineries, They’re looking at somewhere between five and seven gallons of water to make one gallon of wine. Now that doesn’t mean they’re adding water to the wine. What it means is they’re using water to wash the tanks, to wash the barrels, to irrigate the vineyards, to do all these different things. And the Australians have that down to around two gallons of water for one gallon of wine, partly because they have to, because they’ve had massive drought, but also because they’re really smart and they’ve made a committed effort to it.
So I think there’s another area I don’t think it’s safe because I think there are so many wineries doing interesting, important things. And we really should reward all of those people. Natural wine simply means that you’re not using some of the processes that were developed basically since the time of Louis Pasteur, who understood that there are tiny little microbes everywhere and you’re never quite sure what they’re going to do. Is that the single best way to save the climate? No, it may create some interesting wines, but I’m going to argue that I don’t think anybody should judge wine based on how it is made alone.
I think ultimately the real thing you ought to be looking at is what does it taste like in my mouth? And if I’m tasting wines that I’m convinced are delicious, then the next question is, okay, who makes wines like this and is making a real effort to move our struggle against climate change in the right direction? And I’m pretty sure that no matter what kind of wine you like, If you approach it that way, first drink what you like and then find responsible, reputable producers who are doing their best to fight this problem.
You will drink a lot more wine, you will enjoy a lot more, and you’ll still be accomplishing the goal of rewarding wineries that are making an effort.
Ross Kenyon: Somewhat counterintuitive advice. I think most people walk into the wine aisle or their wine shop and frankly, it’s overwhelming, especially when you go to places that have really small vineyards overall. Like I’m thinking of your lectures on primogeniture. I think it’s Bordeaux, right? Where you have all the clothes and like maybe you have less than an acre. Actually, that’s Burgundy. Okay, Burgundy, yes. How can I possibly... You can know Robert Mondavi or you can know Barefoot or you can know some of these enormous brands.
I think when most people get beyond that, they might know a grape they like. They might know that they like Prosecco or something like that. But I doubt many people could even name a manufacturer beyond the couple that I named. Maybe Two Buck Chuck might make an appearance.
Paul Wagner: Yes, but we live in a wonderful time. We live in a time where there are even apps for your phone where you can take a picture of the label and it will instantaneously take you to a website that will tell you about the wine. Again, I think wineries that are being responsible about this are making a real effort. I had a very funny conversation a while back. A sommelier had written an article and he was furious about the fact that the younger generation of consumers, they were coming into his restaurant and they weren’t even talking to him about the wines.
He was furious and I thought it’s your own damn fault because too many sommeliers think they walk on water. Too many of them think that they’re the ones who need to explain everything. And frankly, for young people who are just learning about wine, that’s an intimidating process. Sure not intimidating to pull out your phone and type in the name of a line and find out, oh, look, this is a family that’s been in production. The Trimbach family in Alsace has been in production for something like 13 generations.
Think If they know anything about sustainability, let’s try this bottle and see what’s going on. And you can do the same thing in a grocery store. It doesn’t have to be as intimidating as you think if you decide that you’re actually going to be kind of proactive about the whole thing. And once you find a brand or two or a producer or two that you really like and are comfortable with, then it gets easy because then you can start telling people, you know what I like? I like this.
And then that sommelier who can be difficult to deal with says, oh, well, if you like that, then I can recommend this. And then you’re golden. Then your problem is solved.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. I think that’s, that sounds like a really easy way. And I think wine, especially when you’re doing tasting notes that are silly, we have a family joke where one time we’re eating at a restaurant in LA and the waiter described a wine is having a spank of leather. Yeah. But I found that to be a way rather than being like, I’m tasting lychee, you know, spank of leather. You’re like that. Right. That’s really intimidating. Am I onto something? Is that a decent way to start?
Paul Wagner: It is, although I’m going to I’m going to suggest there are even easier ways. You know, the first question that my partner in my in my wine podcast always says is, do you like skim milk or do you like whole milk? Do you want a wine that’s light and elegant or do you want a wine that’s rich and luscious? And of course, you may say, oh, I always like rich and luscious. And then you think, okay, you’re having calamari. What’s on the side of the plate?
A slice of lemon. Trust me, you don’t want a piece of watermelon with your calamari. It doesn’t taste good. You need something to cut through the grease of the calamari. So order something that’s light and fresh and full of acid. On the other hand, how many of us drink lemonade with steak? Not very many because it doesn’t taste very good. So you are right. Those sliding scales work. I love the idea of starting with body color. Do you want red or white?
I always say forget red wine with red meat and white wine with fish. I always say pick the color of the wine based on the color of the sauce. Because this also solves that massive problem of, well, what about pasta? Because pasta can come with anything from lemon and capers to spaghetti bolognese in a meat sauce. So saying the wine goes well with pasta doesn’t tell me very much at all. So match the color of the wine with the color of the sauce, light body or heavy bodies, skim milk or whole milk.
And then really, it’s just a question of finding the flavors you like. Axies are helpful. One of the things that makes this so complicated Is that every bit of research that has ever been done indicates that in the way that some people are slightly, well, are colorblind, where they don’t necessarily distinguish between red and green or purple and brown. It turns out that in terms of aromatics and flavors, there are many more genetic differences between individuals than there are in terms of visions. So in fact, what you smell may be quite different from what I smell.
So depending on somebody else’s descriptors ultimately can be a real problem because that waiter may have found that spank of leather in that wine you recommended, but you may have smelled it and said, that’s funny, I smell cherries. And the answer is you’re both right. But in that case, you’ve got to find another way of talking about the wine because talking about what you’re smelling isn’t going to get you anywhere. You have two very different It’s almost as if one of you is wearing sunglasses that are polarized and the other one is wearing a pair of glasses where the lenses are green.
Ross Kenyon: Interesting. Actually, I really love your suggestion to start with body. I remember that from your lectures too. I think there was something parallel with the not, I don’t like sweet wine. And I think it’s similar to how I had a, I had a beautiful Tempranillo recently. I like pinots a lot too, that are red, but less in terms of body. That was just a pleasurable experience that I didn’t have to chew my way through. I wasn’t thinking about texture and feeling my tongue numbing.
It was just good. I think it’s okay for something to just be good in that simple kind of way without also having to intensely work my palate through.
Paul Wagner: One of my great heroes is Hugh Johnson, the master of wine, and he has a wonderful statement right up front in one of his series of lectures on wine in which he says, above all else, wine has a single purpose in life, and that is to be refreshing. It’s a beverage after all. And in that same way, that gets to that point that when you put it in your mouth, ideally, you want to feel as if you are somehow refreshing yourself. Some of those big heavy wines don’t feel refreshing.
And they may be good on their own in certain situations. But when it comes time to sitting down with a group of people and having a meal, you really want something that refreshes your palate and doesn’t hammer it like a jackhammer.
Ross Kenyon: Well, Paul, this is a great place to leave it. I feel like now I’m just getting free wine lessons from you. We did the climate stuff out of obligation. I got to learn about wine for my own fun. Hopefully the listeners, and I really hope someone listening might feel like this was an accessible way into wine, but maybe they’ve been intimidated previously. And maybe this is a good starting point. So thanks so much for teaching me. I love all your work. Thanks for coming on this show.
I’m really grateful to have you.
Paul Wagner: My pleasure and at some other date we’ll come back and talk about all the other things like the various kinds of packaging that wine’s going through that may or may not be good for the climate. Bag in the box and aluminum cans and all screw caps and all those other things so there’s lots more to talk about and I really enjoyed myself and hope we can do it again sometime Ross.
Ross Kenyon: I’d love that. Also, you were saying too that you have a wine podcast. Maybe if you wanted to tell our listeners, I’d be happy to include a link and all of that.
Paul Wagner: Sure. We’ve actually been on hiatus because of COVID and the studios at Capital Public Radio have been closed. We are hoping to get that restarted again fairly soon. It’s called rickandpaulwine.com. And to Rick Cushman, who’s often a commentator on Capital Public Radio and Wine, and me. So rickandpaulwine.com. Or you can just go to capradio.org. And it’s right there in the podcast, right along with Fresh Air with Terry Gross and all those other great things they do on NPR.
Ross Kenyon: Terrific. Links to that and many of the other things we discussed are in the show notes. Well, thanks so much for listening. Hope you enjoyed yourself and learned a few things. Please give us a great rating on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, whichever one you use. Share this podcast with a friend. And thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for listening. If you could please subscribe and give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts or a rating on Spotify, that’d be much appreciated.
It helps us get our content out to more people. You can sign up for our newsletter at nori.com. Follow us on social media. We will catch you next time.
